The Suffering of Abandonment

Homily

Saturday, September 8, and Sunday, September 9, 2007, 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, C

Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Parish, Emmett; Sacred Heart Parish, Yale

Many start their Catholic lives with enthusiasm, but then bump into many problems. Many couples begin their marriages with fire in their hearts, even desirous to have numerous children, and raise them in the faith, only to encounter that later in life, they are beset with difficulties, and it’s not as easy as they once thought it would be. There are adults convert to Catholicism, only to find that it’s more difficult than they imagined. Some Catholics have a second conversion later in life, but find countless obstacles and resistance from outside, and even from within their own selves. “Father,” they say, “has God forgotten about me? Has he abandoned me? Doesn’t he love me? What’s wrong?” And confusion clouds our minds because we think of divine love the way the world portrays human love, full of emotions and pleasures and riches and other such nonsense.

All I can say is: Welcome to Catholicism, welcome to the cross! Jesus Christ did not promise anything else except the cross. Those who love themselves more than Jesus cannot carry his cross, but they can’t escape it either, and so they turn bitter, godless, despairing, sometimes suicidal, sad and lazy. Those who love Jesus more than themselves carry their cross, and ask for more, and become sweet, holy, hopeful, loving, joyful and spiritually strong. When Jesus said, “”Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple,”[1] he himself had not yet gone up on the cross; his disciples could only have wondered. But wonder is an essential aspect to suffering, for suffering is a mystery, a mystery of divine love, which the mind unenlightened by faith can never comprehend.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta, now a canonized saint, brings us to the mystery of the cross, and helps us see it with the light of faith. Albanian by birth, and a Loreto nun by vow, she had a vision from the Lord, at 35 or 36 years of age. When traveling from Calcutta to a retreat house in Darjeeling, she learned of the special mission God wanted from her: to serve the poorest of the poor. He said to her, “Wilt thou refuse? You have become my spouse for my love. You have come to India for me. The thirst you had for souls brought you so far. Are you afraid now to take one more step for your spouse, for me, for souls?” And her divine spouse wooed her with such profound proddings. She enjoyed a remarkable experience of union with God that year and the next, 1946-1947. But then that ended. For the next few decades of her life, she was assailed with temptations of doubt, and real pain of abandonment from God.

Some of you have seen the recent assault of the secular media on Saint Teresa of Calcutta. They call her a hypocrite, they use her to prove that there is no God, she has become a pawn in their dark plans against God and his Church. And they do this because they have no faith, and with no faith, they cannot understand the cross.

Did not Jesus Christ, who is God Himself, quote the Psalm from the cross, crying, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?”[2] If the Son of God experienced abandonment in the saving pain of the cross, how can his followers not? Indeed, the darkness which Mother Teresa endured was a tiny participation in the self-emptying Jesus experienced by leaving heaven and becoming man, suffering sinlessly a sinner’s death.

Saint Teresa’s pain of abandonment was a gift of total purification, where God helped her empty herself, as Jesus emptied himself, until there was no more self-love in her. She loved God for God’s sake, she hoped in God for God’s sake, she believed in God as an act of adoration. This was not the sad distance from God which the sinner feels, this was not a chemically or hormonally induced state of clinical depression, this was a supernatural purification, the most terrible of all pains known to man on earth.

There are seasons in the spiritual life. In the springtime, everything is new and full of promise, strong and joyful. In the summer, we bend over under the labor of the day. In the autumn, we learn contemplation and interior peace. But then there’s the winter, full of long, dark nights, where all living things appear dead; it’s dangerous, stormy, cold and hard. Only thereafter can there be another spring. And only after the crucifixion can their be a resurrection.

Jesus, the Lord and God, sanctified your suffering by his suffering, and all your suffering has meaning. St. John of the Cross writes, in his Ascent of Mt. Carmel, speaking of the purification he named the dark night of the soul, “Oh night, you who have led me! Oh night, more lovable than the dawn! Oh night, which joined betrothed to beloved [meaning the soul with God], the betrothed transformed into the beloved!”[3] This is what the cross does in your life. He loved abandonment, because in it he learned love.

How I wish each of you to see your trials as blessings. Your corrections heal you. Your difficulties strengthen you. Your failures make you grow in humility and trust in God. Your conflicts help you grow in charity with one another.

Jesus did not say, “Take up your fabulous sensations and follow me.” He did not say, “Take up your fuzzy, cuddly teddy-bear, and follow me.” He did not say, “Take up your comforts, your worldly securities, your pride and follow me.” He says, “Whoever dos not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” What a mountain of wisdom. What an answer to all man’s problems. What a hope for the most despairing, and what light for the most confused!

I wish to give you all homework this week, and it is very simple: Take at least a quarter hour, if you can an hour, and if you can still more, here before the blessed sacrament, and meditate only upon this one line from the Gospel: “Whoever dos not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” For Jesus wants you to be his disciple, and he wants you to be victorious. And be not afraid, he will help you. Amen.